1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of computer systems management and, in particular, to methods, systems, and computer program products for extending the manageability capabilities of information technology (IT) resources through the use of manageability aspects.
2. Description of Background
One of the primary goals of an information technology (IT) resource model within an IT management system is to define programmatic representations of manageability interfaces of IT manageable resources. Using web service concepts, each IT resource type is represented as an XML schema component. The XML schema component is then logically extended with operational behavior. Operational behavior refers to the introduction of web service operations to a stateful object represented by the XML schema component. Requestors access properties, operations, and events of a manageable resource through standard interfaces defined in standards such as CIM, web services distributed management (WSDM), and through other organizations extending base manageability capabilities.
One of the most important, and least understood, tenets in expressing the manageability of an IT resource is that the interfaces expressing the manageability function of a resource are an integral part of the resource itself. In other words, the very existence of a core manageability interface of a manageable resource is dependent upon the existence of the manageability resource to which it applies. A resource cannot express, implement, or make available a manageability interface if the resource does not exist.
Determining the composition of a manageability interface for a resource poses problems related to the maintenance of the structural integrity of the manageable resource entity itself. In traditional resource management systems, each management function takes on the responsibility of representing the same IT resources, with each function representing a particular perspective for the manageable resources. As a result, the same manageable resources are represented by multiple implementations across the system with no coherence with respect to the resource identity or lifecycle management of the resource. As a further consequence, programming logic is introduced in an attempt to correlate the different names and identities of the various expressions of the manageable resources in order to achieve some level of coherence.
In traditional systems, few implementations of manageability interfaces represent an essential state or life cycle of the resource entity itself. Rather, the implementations represent specific manageability aspects of an IT resource with no formal means to relate the manageability extensions to the identity or life cycle of the actual manageable resource entity being represented. In view of the foregoing considerations, what is needed is an improved technique for extending the manageability capabilities of IT resources.